Johnson is also proud to announce that Rennekamp will join Johnson’s faculty on July 1, 2014, as assistant professor of accounting. Now assistant professor of accountancy and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP Faculty Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Rennekamp earned both her MS and PhD in management at Johnson in 2011 and 2012, respectively.

The FARS Best Dissertation Award is intended to recognize and reward the outstanding research of junior colleagues. Rennekamp’s paper was selected from among nine very high quality dissertations that were completed in the past year. In making their decision, Awards Committee members considered the importance of the financial accounting/reporting issue addressed, the quality of execution of her study, and the contribution of her research.

“I’m very excited about receiving the FARS Best Dissertation Award,” says Rennekamp. “It’s always nice to be recognized for the hard work that I put in, and it’s a testament to the support that I received from my dissertation committee.”

Rennekamp’s dissertation chairman, Robert Libby, David A. Thomas Professor of Management and professor of accounting at Johnson, praises Rennekamp for her original and creative research, noting that it “makes a unique and important contribution to the recent literature on the impact of the style of non-numeric financial disclosures.” Both of the experiments she designed and conducted for her research, he says, “introduce an experimental approach that is quite novel and pose predictions and show demonstrated effects that have important implications for investor relations strategies and for investment managers. We are all very pleased that we were able to convince her to leave the University of Illinois and return to Cornell in 2014.”

Rennekamp is also looking forward to returning to Johnson as a faculty member. “It’s almost like ‘coming home,’ she says. “I think that it’s the people that tipped my decision – the Johnson School is just such a great place for bouncing research ideas off of the people who are the very best in their field.”

FARS will present Rennekamp with her award at a luncheon to be held at the FARS annual meeting in Anaheim, Calif., on Aug. 5. As Rennekamp’s dissertation chairman, Libby will also receive recognition for his significant contribution to her work at the FARS annual meeting luncheon.